Synopsis
After the extraordinary success of Water for Elephants, with 3 million copies shipped, Sara Gruen returns with another immensely charming, endlessly surprising, and engaging novel in which a family of apes teaches us what it means to be human.
Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants has become one of the most beloved and bestselling novels of our time. Now Gruen has moved from a circus elephant to family of bonobo apes. When the apes are kidnapped from a language laboratory, their mysterious appearance on a reality TV show calls into question our assumptions about these animals who share 99.4% of our DNA.
A devoted animal lover, Gruen has had a life-long fascination with human-ape discourse, and a particular interest in Bonobo apes, who share 99.4% of our DNA. She has studied linguistics and a system of lexigrams in order to communicate with apes, and is one of the few visitors who has been allowed access to the Great Ape Trust in Des...
The Barnes & Noble Review
After reading Sara Gruen's captivating fourth novel, Ape House, you'll not only know about bonobos in general, you'll also know half a dozen of these great apes as characters with personalities as distinct as fingerprints. Gruen's gift for reaching across the species divide is as evident in Ape House as it was in her mega-selling Water for Elephants, which featured Rosie, the Depression-era circus elephant. Not since Jack London explored the boundaries between the domesticated dog and the wolf in The Call of the Wild has a writer dramatized the bonds between humans and our fellow creatures with such empathy.